Read more at: https://vicnews.com/2025/10/29/oak-bay-trail-saved-when-neighbours-come-together-good-things-happen/
When the District of Oak Bay proposed to put a 15-foot-wide paved bike path over a small natural corridor back in 2024, a group in the community spoke out.
Soon, these members banded together to not only protect that little corridor that had come to mean so much to them – they also set on a quest to improve it for generations to come.
On Oct. 19, the CHEFFE Neighbourhood Volunteers hosted the Carrick Trail Celebration to mark the official opening of the trail and celebrate the community’s efforts to preserve and enhance it.
Kristy Kilpatrick, one of the leaders on the project, said the trail is a natural gem that needed to be protected.
“Many in our neighbourhood have walked and cycled through the trail for decades, some of us for over 35 years. Generations of kids have played on the ancient glacier-scoured rocks that become pirate ships and sleeping giants,” she said. “It’s truly a natural social hub and preserving it has brought our neighbourhood even closer together.”
The CHEFFE volunteers came from across Carrick, Haultain, Epworth, Florence, Fair and Eastdowne, committed to preserving the “beautiful little nature trail” connecting Haultain to Carrick, long used as both a walking and cycling path.
So, how did the neighbourhood group pull it off?
It all started in August 2024, when the group learned that two proposed Oak Bay bikeways – tying back to the 2011 Act of Transportation – were going to converge in their neighbourhood. That project would include blasting out bedrock and rocks from the glacial period and disruption to the natural green space, including paving over the root systems of Garry oak trees estimated to be hundreds of years old.
“We didn’t think we were appropriate for this particular pathway whatsoever and quite far from it. A pathway that is so largely used by pedestrians would then be taken over by fast-moving bicycles,” said Anne Mathers, another resident and leader in the project.
The group took the mayor and every councillor on a walking tour to show how well the trail already worked for both pedestrians and cyclists. They asked staff to participate in a walkabout to hear the concerns of over 70 neighbours. They also met with individual councillors, some multiple times.
Then, before a decision was made, they connected with one of the greatest supports: the CoolKit Program, a district initiative with the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry, designed for neighbours who wish to restore, enhance and protect local natural assets.
“We just went to Oak Bay Parks and they were totally on board,” Mathers said.
“From there, it was very grassroots. We just started talking to people. And before you know it, we have all this expertise, we have skill sets, etcetera, interested people in the neighbourhood.”
Once the council decision was made to leave the trail, they expanded their work with the help of many.
“Chris Hyde-Lay, the manager of Parks Services, was enthusiastic from the get-go and has been a huge support,” Kilpatrick said. He provided six Garry oaks along with native species such as Oregon grape, native mock orange and flowering red currents. He also sent a crew to get rid of invasive plant material.
They were also “incredibly lucky” with who lived in the neighbourhood.
There was Matt Fairbarns, a nationally recognized conservation ecologist who runs the charity Castilleja Conservation Society. Fairbarns donated his crew for a three-day soil cleanup and provided hundreds of native species that he had grown in his backyard, along with his enthusiasm for sharing expert knowledge.
Margaret Lidkea, who leads Friends of Uplands Park, was also a “wonderful resource” providing plants, advice, tools and inspiration, Kilpatrick said.
After hundreds of hours of volunteer work and pulling out invasive plants such as ivy and grasses since March, the result is night and day, says Mathers. And it will only continue to blossom and grow come spring.
“It’s unbelievable what we’ve brought here. We’ve got a little fern grotto, and we’ve got another area that’s planted in all native plants, really showcasing a beautiful arbutus tree in our midst. And of course, exposing all this incredible glacial rock,” she said. “I have people coming through saying, ‘My children played here. I have a picture of my daughter when she was two here.’ So it’s been a neighbourhood asset forever, but it was under our noses as an overlook.”
Kilpatrick said that while its work will be continuous, especially fighting invasives, it’s now on its way to becoming a pollinator corridor connecting all kinds of insects, birds and butterflies.
But, it’s also a “human connector,” she said. “It’s a connection for people from all over Oak Bay,” Mathers added. “And still, we meet people who don’t know about it, which is quite lovely … it’s incredible what this has actually created.”
“It’s an incredibly important and much-loved space in our neighbourhood,” added Kilpatrick. “As Bruce always says, ‘When neighbours come together, good things happen.”